#went from my favourite subject to being dogshit

[rainyraisin]

22 more days b4 I find out if I can go to college (GCSE results please be good I am begging you)

[radramblog]

on George Lazenby

There are quite a few actors who’ve portrayed the character of James Bond at this point. Sean Connery of course was the original bloke, Roger Moore spent forever with the series, Daniel Craig the current, violent iteration. There’s slightly more obscure cases, like Timothy Dalton’s two entire movies, or the 60s parody Casino Royale film featuring Peter Sellers and David Niven. Don’t watch that one, it’s awful.

Of all these actors, though, none of them have as momentous Big Dick Energy as the first Australian James Bond, the man who only appeared in one of the films, the star of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: George Lazenby.

To talk properly about this subject, we need some backstory- about both Lazenby and the Bond movies.

After You Only Live Twice, the movie in which Bond goes entirely Japanese, Sean Connery stated he was pretty much done with playing the role. As much as it was a lucrative career for him, he was getting absolutely hounded by the 60s paparazzi, he was on very bad terms with producer Albert Broccoli, and as a result he bowed out of the series (for then). While the casting team wanted to get Roger Moore in at this point, he was busy filming a TV series called The Saint. So they had to find someone new.

Enter: George Lazenby. This motherfucker.

George Lazenby was a model and former used car salesman based in London. Pretty young (29) and good looking at the time, but he had basically zero acting experience. Pretty much all he had was being in an advertisement for Fry’s Chocolates. For the record, Fry’s has been subsumed into Cadbury at this point, though their Turkish Delights still bear the Fry’s name.

No, your headphones aren’t fucked, that video is only playing in one ear.

Now I don’t have a solid source for this, which is a shame, because it’s got to be some of the coolest shit I’ve ever heard an actor do. Before the commercial was released, Lazenby happened to meet Broccoli at the barbershop, and when Broccoli saw the commercial, he thought Lazenby might be the answer to their Bond problem. He gave George a call, asking if he wanted to go do a screentest at their sound studio.

George told Albert that A. He was in Paris about to be filming a movie, and B. They were paying him 250 pounds a day (For reference that’s over 3700 pounds today, or 7000 Aussie dollars). Neither of those things were true. Albert, for whatever reason, was willing to gamble that Lazenby would be a good Bond, so he effectively told him that they’d comp him that money if he was able to come down for their test shooting. In effect, they were paying him an incredible salary to audition for the role of Bond. Obviously, Lazenby agreed to this.

With the potential to end up leading in a Bond movie, Lazenby went out of his way to be as Sean-Connery-like as possible for the audition. He bought a suit that Connery had ordered, but never picked up, and he got a haircut to make him look the part even further.

In the audition, Lazenby was told to throw a stage punch at the stunt coordinator. Lazenby did not know what a stage punch was. Lazenby used full force, and broke the poor guy’s nose.

The casting directors were impressed by his ability to portray aggression. And also the fact that he was basically the 1968 version of a 10/10. At some point he came clean that he absolutely was not an actor, but he was told that he’d managed to convince some of the hardasses in the production company that he was- and what is that but excellent acting?

OHMSS is a…complicated movie to talk about, not helped by the fact that I haven’t seen it in quite some time. Lazenby portrays a very different kind of Bond, lighter-hearted and more polite than Connery, and while some of his acting is obviously rough, it’s helped by the man’s natural charisma. It’s probably the only James Bond iteration who I’d want to actually hang around. It helps that it’s probably got one of the strongest emotional cores in any of the movies, with Diana Rigg’s character of Tracy being an actual romantic interest rather than just another Bond Girl, not to mention the absolute gut punch that is the film’s ending. As much as people have slagged George for his performance, his acting in that final scene is utterly superb.

I won’t get into a lot of the technical details, but the film is kind of a mess. The editor of the previous films, Peter Hunt, wanted to direct the film, which ironically led to the editing of this movie being completely dogshit. The fight scenes are particularly awful in this regard. But overall, I think it’s one of the more underrated Bond flicks.

Lazenby, however, was seriously going through the wringer to make this film. He noted that because he wasn’t a “professional actor”, most of the production team basically treated him like ass and like he didn’t know what he was doing (which to be fair he often didn’t). He was hit with just as much paparazzi as Connery, if not moreso on account of being The New Guy. And allegedly, he was kind of an arrogant ass a lot of the time backstage. As a result, even though he had a 7-film contract, his agent was able to convince him that Bond would soon be old hat, and departed the franchise, with many a burned bridge left behind him. In particular, the higher-ups at Eon Productions were utterly pissed at him for showing up to the premiere looking absolutely nothing like he did in the movie- he’d grown his hair out as well as a beard, seeking to leave that face behind him. “Bond is a brute…I’ve already put him behind me”, he said.

And that’s the main story behind George Lazenby in OHMSS, to my understanding. I’m likely to be wrong on some fronts (I’m still not sure on the numbers re: his pay), but the long and short of it is: this Aussie bloke waltzed the fuck into Eon Productions, got himself the starring role in a fucking Bond movie, and waltzed right back out into the night. Eon eventually got Connery back for one more film, at the cost of the highest salary an actor had ever received for a film at the time (1.25 million pounds of the film’s relatively limited budget, 18.8 million in today’s money).

This would not be the end of Lazenby’s tale, however, but I’m going to skip most of it because there’s only one real thing I wanted to bring up. After struggling to find work (him being difficult had gotten out at this point) and some smaller film appearances, he ended up near-broke on account of alcoholism and multiple nervous breakdowns. He eventually went to Hong Kong in 1973, to meet with Bruce Lee and Raymond Chow to discuss him appearing in the upcoming Game of Death.

The day Lazenby was going to meet Bruce Lee was the day Bruce Lee died. But Lazenby still ended up working with that company to make a trio of films- The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss (not great), The Man From Hong Kong (a cult-classic among kung fu movies), and A Queen’s Ransom (also meh), for which he apparently got pretty decent at martial arts.

Anyway that’s kind of it, I just thought George was cool (I mean he might still be, but he’s like 81 at this point so who knows) and I don’t think that many people know the story behind him. The one-and-done Bond, as it were. And probably still my favourite one.